The Zoegate Spreadsheet

There’s been a lot of talk about Zoegate AKA the Quinnspiracy AKA GamerGate AKA some stupid shit that happened on the Internet. It’s a huge clusterfuck, with parties that would normally be on each other’s sides at each other’s throats, and parties that would normally hate each other banding together. I decided to make a spreadsheet to keep track of all of it.

Each cell indicates the Row party’s position on the Column party (e.g. E8 indicates <E>’s position on <8>).

Positive positions are marked in green. Neutral, irrelevant, conflicting, or unknown positions are indicated in yellow. Negative positions are indicated in red.

All red positions have explanations. Yellow and green ones may have them if the position is surprising or notable.

This is intended as a tool. It’s not meant to express any opinion. Neutral language is used wherever possible. Words like “allegedly” and “reportedly” are used even when the proof is pretty compelling.

Some positions are extrapolated based on informed conjecture. If new data negate them, I’ll update the spreadsheet.

I know that some of these parties are divided into sub-factions, but that level of detail would have been confusing.

If there’s anything you think should be changed, please let me know, and I’ll look into it.

Please use this spreadsheet respectfully as a reference. I want this to foster understanding, not discord.

Brief opinion time: I’ll probably post my thoughts on this whole debacle in a long-ass post in the coming days. If you’re a follower of this blog, you know that I strongly support both social justice and journalistic ethics. That’s why this situation has been so incredibly hard for me to process. In any case, be respectful, and remember that love is always better than hate.

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Oy. I’m soooo glad I got out of video games and into board games before this happened.

Overall, what else should we expect from a journalistic medium whose main vehicle is the polemic, which is usually pulled out in rare circumstances? Hit-piece after hit-piece shoved down throats will roughen an already raw esophagus.

Shame on a lot of angles. Harassment is rampant regardless of political position. Devin Faraci is, as usual, acting like a complete tool. Sarkeesian’s been pulled into this vortex, her harassment questioned when it shouldn’t be. And I’ve been seeing tons of ableist language on the part of gaping assholes in paid positions. These are anointed thoughtmakers championing tolerance with one corner of their mouth and talking about virgin neckbeards with the other. Forget Zoe Quinn or Sarkeesian (the first thing I thought of when I saw the zoepost is that it is and will forever be none of my business and I have polite disagreements with the estimable Ms. S), there are not only the trolls we expected to see, but Pharisees whose hypocrisy sends up an unholy reek. Virgin shaming? Really? Do none of them realize that that’s the sort of sexual dynamic about men needing to “dirty themselves up” that lies around the “chaste woman” level of sexism?

Sex doesn’t matter to me, as I’m voluntarily celibate. Personal skeletons are none of my business and the blogpost never should have come up. Harassment is . . . just no. NO! I’m a pacifist and shall never contribute to a culture of abuse.

By the way, Critical Distance (which is caught up in shenanigans) does NOT impress me. Its curation has a pattern in that you can see only the shape of the journalist’s own opinion in a collage of links. Bias is one thing, but CD takes it to a ridiculous extreme by declaring that it only lists good writing and then only listing opinion pieces the founder, Kris Ligman, can get behind. That’s not curation. That’s another blog. I was done with it when I saw a tangential member quote Ligman endorsing HERSELF (“When others ask where gaming journalism is, I can safely declare that it is here”). Ego trip.

And yes, there IS fucking conflict of interest in Patreon. There’s no fucking doubt. Forget Reuter’s: I looked at Ebert’s little handbook to reviewer ethics and found that people had systematically violated EVERY RULE. Look, I don’t think that there’s a conspiracy at all, but I DO see a lot of folks closing ranks, doubling down, and employing the sort of cover-my-ass tactics that parents use to protect degenerate children. That doesn’t require collusion — it simply requires some shitbrained, fraternity thinking.

I’m currently working on a blog post about all of this, but without going into too much detail, I largely agree with your comment.

As for Critical Distance, I have no problem with their having an ideological slant. (Of course, I’m biased, since it largely echoes my own.) But I draw the line at misinformation. Asserting that TotalBiscuit was participating in the harassment of Zoë Quinn and insinuating that Eron Gjoni is an abuser (not the other way around) is fucking shameful, and the people who operate CD should know better than to pull that shit.

I actually don’t have a problem with their possession of an ideological slant . . . if they were about that. Instead, they claim to be apart of that conscious curation you mentioned. Furthermore, their high opinion of themselves (that quotation) gives off a self-righteous odor I can’t stand.

Their ideological slant agrees with mine as well, and that’s okay if their goal is to editorialize. But they claim to compile “good writing,” and much of that “good writing” is, like Zoya’s atrocious article, notable simply for its self-congratulation and back-patting.

They are not about showcasing writing or journalism. It would be easier to swallow if they admitted that and dropped the ego. As it stands, there’s less variety than there is on your “What I’ve Been Reading,” and that system doesn’t set itself up as some sort of professor giving industry pieces the grade they deserve.